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Friday, November 25, 2011

Sign up on the widget below and leave a comment. Then from today until Dec. 9th, write a 1000 words or less flash fiction that includes all of the gifts from the 12 Days of Christmas! It doesn't have to follow the song, just have them in there however you like. Then hop around to each other's blog and critique or comment. Along with some special judges, I will be hopping around reading and picking out our favorites and on Dec. 10th, we will post our 3 winners!

Here goes.

Upon a Dream

It starts with a dream.

I close my eyes and I dream a dream that would start out sweet to anyone who didn’t know it.

It’s snowing. I used to love snow, but it’s become a part of my haunted mind. This snow doesn’t dissolve into small puddles. It crunches beneath my feet but never leaves a print, never a track. I wonder if this is so that I will be lost in this miserable wonderland forever.

It never changes, but it startles me just the same. The same pear tree with a fat bird. The same pond with the very same swans swimming in circles, their long necks reaching to the white-as-snow sky.

I come to a village with a bottled surprise. There’s the same unmelting snow resting on the wooden fences. There are several women in long dresses and bonnets milking cows. They kneel beside their cows with tin buckets in front of their knees, and they purr names that are horribly stereotypical. “Shh, Bessie,” one says. “Good, Bluebell,” another adds. They are a chorus of murmurs. I walk past a girl who’s carrying a hen in a cage. No one ever seems to notice me. I have never even seen them move other than when they were milking cows or carrying hens. They are robotic. They are not alive.

I walk past the village. The sky is an odd shade of blue. It’s almost white, but has a strange tint to it, like gathered glass. I pass the geese at the very edge of their fences and the turtle doves and the colly birds, their beady eyes watching me as I shuffle my way through the snow.

There’s what I assume to be a parade. They always appear just after I look at the rings on my hands. I count them twice. There are five of them in total, all gold and gleaming in the nonexistent sunlight. Two on my right hand. Three on my left. I’ve tried, in the past times that this happens, to look at the rings at a different times, but I’ve never been able to really bring my gaze to them before I pass the village.

The parade is a wild beast, feral. It lashes out at me and tries to grip me in its claws. The ladies in shining and glittering fabrics of different colors - though I notice that the colors silver, gold, red, and green are always more prominent in these swarms of movement - sway and shimmy past me. Men leap around me, all happy faces and joyous laughter. I feel so out of place. These people too never seem to stray from their spot.

I push them out of my way. I carry on. I have to.

When I finally break away from the pipers and the drummers, I run. I have no clue where I’m going, just that I must get there.

I see the slightest shine on nothing and I sprint at it. My heart beats loudly throughout my body. I can feel it in my limbs. This glimmer of nothing, it must be what I’m after. I know it is. It must be. And so I run until my palms hit something hard and I feel smooth glass under my hand. I pound my fist against it.

The world shakes. I’m tossed back to the beginning of my journey, before the swans moving in perfect circles and before the village. This never-melting snow floats so slowly though the air. It shimmers in the light, but there is no Sun. It reminds me of glitter.

I’m tired of the journey, but I feel my feet moving. The swans round their pond again and again. The women milk their cows with a measured precision. I see the girl carrying what appears to be the exact same hen. The birds never move from their perches.